Cover Image: The Rag and Bone Shop

The Rag and Bone Shop

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Member Reviews

The Rag and None shop book made you think how your brain works. Also where it said you can't have a last without a present. It was very informative about why we sometimes think and act in certain ways.

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Written by a neuroscientist, this book delves deep into the workings of memory, self awareness and consciousness. Although the book gets quite technical at times, everything is explained so it's accessible to the layperson and the author draws from her clinical experience to give plenty of illustrative case studies. For lovers of literature, O'Keane also gives lots of examples of how great artists like Proust, Sartre and Dostoevsky wrote about the experience of memory and consciousness before modern science was able to explain the processes involved. It's an utterly fascinating and mindblowing read, and I would recommend the book to anyone who's interested in the human condition.

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This is a fascinating book, extremely accessible to the layperson, which walks the tightrope between clinical experience and science (and neuroscience) at its cutting edge. It is centrally a discussion on what memory is, how memories are made and stored, and what they mean to us. So oddly it is interesting that its greatest impact on me was not so much about memory at all, but rather the repeated examples of psychotic patients experience sensations created by their own brains and the impact both of the memories of this psychosis, but also the ability of anti-psychotic drugs to cure the sensate issues, if not those caused by the memories. As a philosophy graduate I am pretty comfortable with the idea of how memory makes us, and how all we are is our experiences, what O'Keane does a good job at trying to explain is how and why.

Why do we have very few memories of our youth? why is it that memory seems to be a negotiation between our initial sensations and our own retelling, and re-editing of a story. In talking about how short term memory is formed (and how much it is tied to emotion) and how it slowly gets archived she also powerfully explains partly how aspects of grief fade but grief memories can still conjure up copies of those emotions. She is in a tricky position here, as with all psychology and brain science, there is the challenge of dealing with subjective experiences (mapped sometimes to brain bits firing). There are a few throwaway bits I would have liked to see explored more - there is often a split between visual and linguistic brains, people who have a high internal narrative and I would have been interested to explore how people who might describe their own memories more with words are editing their memories more. But she is robust on some sloppy areas of terminology, she has little truck with false memory as a term because to some degree all memory is false. She certainly has dealt with enough people with trauma to feel its a tiny subset of what you might deal with in memory disorders.

If I had a problem with the Rag And Bone Shop, is I wanted a bit more.As said the philosophical aspect I am up to date with, the brain chemistry was new to me, and this is a still a fast moving area of neuroscience. So there are probably things I want that we don't know yet, though O'Keane is happy to speculate in places, entertainingly so. It certainly goes beyond its promise of what memory is, and really flips it to what are we without memory. Our memory, short or long term, is intractably tied to our sense of self and how we sense the world.

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This is a very thorough examination of how memory works,cleverly illustrated by several case studies. It is very in depth - with a lot of scientific facts, but it reads well and the case studies were well-chosen. I find memory a fascinating topic and I learned so much reading this - how we form memories, and maybe more crucially, how we lose them - there were a=many stories of tragic accidents or illnesses - some temporary - that caused patients to lose their memories. An excellent book and pleasantly written.

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One of the most interesting and deeply engaging books I’ve read for a long time. I was sad to get to the final page as it’s been a really fascinating read.

Veronica O’Keane, with a background in psychiatry and neuroscience, explores the idea of memory in this book. What a memory is, what memories do and the effect memories have on us. With a mixture of scientific literature, case studies and personal anecdotes this is packed full of fascinating information. I feel I’ve learned lots and it’s made me reflect about how wrong the stigma of mental ill health is as well as how much is changing about what we know (and still don’t know) about the brain. While this is fairly academic, there are easy to understand explanations and it’s a very readable and accessible book. The only thing I maybe would have liked to have seen is a section on the idea of inherited trauma and whether trauma can be genetically passed on as a memory and how this effects biology, neurons and the brain. O’Keane also employs multiple examples from novels and literary figures to present her arguments and examples which I found really added to the book and really helped the reader to understand and apply the information.

Think this may have just sparked an interest in neuroscience for me. A very strong five stars!

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The Rag and Bone Shop that is our memory ( WB Yeats ) is the subject of this book. It is an utterly fascinating account of the processes and functions involved in making and storing those memories, and how the process can go wrong and can, thankfully, through skilled intervention be corrected. The author covered along the way a wealth of fascinating topics , debunking Freud ( Thank God) on the way. What had the greatest value for me was the author's compassion and empathy for her patients together with her diagnostic skills. and her persistence. What was also notable was the author's ability to provide a common sense evaluation of pharmaceutical interventions and their capacity to change lives for the better. I loved it.

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This book I found so interesting, with an in depth look into the subject matter on the complexities of the brain and how memories are made and formed (along with instances of how this can sometimes go wrong or be affected in different ways!). The author discussed and brought to the reader the information in an entertaining and informative way and was broken up into digestible chunks to prevent things from getting a little overwhelming!

The brain is such an amazing thing and I think within every person is a child-like fascination into the brain and how it works. So with all of those who are awe struck by the brain and all it can do, this book is beyond perfect. I think many would benefit from reading this in so many ways. It’s impossible to read this book, not be mind-blown or come away with at least one very interesting and astounding thing you’ve learnt. I definitely learnt a lot.

It’s true, I’m a scientist and a science lover so topics like these will always fascinate and interest me but I think anyone with a passing interest in the brain will find interest. I learnt and took in a lot and found it to be structured so well that the information flowed easily from one point to another.

I loved that the author included case studies and her own experiences which was just so interesting to read. I was enraptured! It has a great balance between science, providing the basis for understanding on the subject, the authors own encounters and case studies. There’s also some great illustrations, pictures and drawings which really help to bring a visual aspect to some of the more technical parts. I loved the references to literature too and the relationship to the illnesses that the characters may have been experiencing at the time. As well as the writings on the links between physics, time and our brains on time and perception.

It was great to read about the authors career and her encounters too and overall, I found the book very informative and enjoyable with many notable sections that I think will stay with me for some time to come!

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